I agree with the other commenters, and I want to add that something like correspondence bias is probably making your judgments of LWers’ intelligence higher than they should be.
From your perspective, a smart comment or post is a fait accompli—it’s just handed to you with no clue as to its origin in the writer’s mind. That origin is probably pretty damned humble. Behind most smart comments and posts on LW are, likely, several occasions of saying something dumb (here or elsewhere), being called on it (hopefully in a friendly way), and growing that wee bit smarter.
By the way, I think I recognize in your post the same exhilaration I remember feeling when I was first exposed to the rationality/science/philosophy corpus.
If I’m right about that, your concerns about your intelligence & educational background are probably irrelevant anyway. You, sir, are hooked. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. ;)
I agree with the other commenters, and I want to add that something like correspondence bias is probably making your judgments of LWers’ intelligence higher than they should be.
From your perspective, a smart comment or post is a fait accompli—it’s just handed to you with no clue as to its origin in the writer’s mind. That origin is probably pretty damned humble. Behind most smart comments and posts on LW are, likely, several occasions of saying something dumb (here or elsewhere), being called on it (hopefully in a friendly way), and growing that wee bit smarter.
By the way, I think I recognize in your post the same exhilaration I remember feeling when I was first exposed to the rationality/science/philosophy corpus.
If I’m right about that, your concerns about your intelligence & educational background are probably irrelevant anyway. You, sir, are hooked. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. ;)